Will Tyler 1 Get Banned Again?

Notorious League of Legends streamer Tyler1 returned to authorized play on Monday, Jan 8, 2018, after Riot Games lifted the extraordinary ID ban it imposed on him in Apr, 2016. He showed upwardly for his countdown stream dressed in bootleg cosplay of his favorite champion, Draven, and too a Wonder Woman tiara.

And he immediately broke the Twitch record for the most simultaneous viewers.

Who is this guy, and what happened?

You tin can read my long-course piece from last year explaining the Tyler1 phenomenon in particular, just hither'southward a quick summary: Tyler1 was a superlative thespian on the N American League of Legends ranked ladder. He also had a very bad temper, and was prone to attacking people in chat and intentionally losing games to spite his teammates.

He rose from relative obscurity after a professional actor called him out on a widely-viewed stream for his toxicity. Tyler leaned into his infamy, branding himself "the most toxic role player in Northward America." He started throwing games and raging on stream to entertain his fans.

Anarchism responded with the ID ban, which meant any account Riot discovered Tyler using would exist banned on sight. This kind of sanction is extremely rare; merely five people in the game's history accept been hit with ID bans.

Tyler has since go an outlaw in League of Legends; he makes new accounts, and climbs through League's ranked ladder. Anarchism notices him when he emerges near the summit, bans the business relationship, and then he gets a new account and starts over at the bottom. His Sisyphean plight has fabricated him a legend among trolls, although he has been proclaiming himself "reformed" and has campaigned to get his ban lifted.

While the ban prevented Tyler from streaming League live (since that would immediately alert Riot to the account he was using and get it banned) there was never whatsoever pretense that the ID level ban was actually preventing him from playing. Anarchism conducted a review of his behavior on accounts he had been using in Oct. 2017 in order to determine if he had reformed plenty to take the sanction lifted. He would exist able to return if his accounts were establish to be clean enough.

How Riot shot itself in the foot

Action to remove Tyler'southward ban happened very before long after fairly major drama in the League customs, which involved, but was not caused direct by, Tyler. Riot employee Aaron Rutledge, known to players as Riot Sanjuro, sounded off nigh Tyler in a Discord conversation affiliated with the League of Legends subreddit on October. i of concluding year.

He said that Tyler1 "looks similar a damn homunculus," and that "he'll die from a coke overdose or testicular cancer from all the steroids. Then we'll be gucci." He also claimed that Tyler's behavior had acquired Sanjuro a not bad bargain of personal "bullshit."

These comments were screencapped and posted on Reddit. Riot's communications lead Ryan "Anarchism Cactopus" Rigney apologized to Tyler1 and to the community, and promised swift internal action. Sanjuro was fired over his comments. Sanjuro told Glixel that he'd been posting while boozer, and that he had checked into rehab post-obit his termination. In a response on Twitter, the about toxic thespian in N America took the high road, insisting he had reformed and proverb he had "no hard feelings" toward Sanjuro.

With that being said I have no difficult feelings towards the guy. Shit happens.

— loltyler1 (@lol_tyler1) October i, 2017

Sanjuro wasn't the first Rioter to criticize Tyler in harsh terms, just Sanjuro's statements crossed many lines. Wishing Tyler's death from overdose or cancer came pretty shut to one of the most severe acts of toxicity in League, which is telling someone to impale themselves. Most toxicity infractions incur a series of escalating punishments, starting with a ten-game conversation brake, progressing to a 25-game restriction, then a fourteen-day temporary ban, and finally a permanent ban.

Some infractions, like using racial epithets, can cause players to skip a punishment tier, but telling someone to kill themselves, or even typing the acronym "kys" in game chat leads to an instant permanent account ban.

It's non entirely clear whether there's a causal connexion between Sanjuro'southward comments and Riot's decision to consider lifting Tyler's ID ban, only if there isn't one, it'southward quite a coincidence that Riot told Tyler his ban was nether review just ii weeks after they fired Sanjuro. The move to lift the ban seemed similar something of a reversal of Riot's position; on Aug. 25, only a few weeks before Sanjuro's comments, Anarchism community coordinator David "Anarchism Phreak" Turley told his stream viewers that Tyler had not been behaving in a fashion that justified lifting the ban, and noted that some of Tyler'southward accounts had been hitting with chat restrictions and other sanctions.

Simply fifty-fifty if they were skeptical that he was fully reformed, it wasn't a slap-up look for Riot to be keeping Tyler on a special double-undercover punishment for toxicity while its staffers were sounding off in public well-nigh how they wished the guy would go cancer.

What was the stream like?

Tyler streamed for nearly 11 hours, gained thousands of subscribers, and maintained half-dozen-figure concurrent viewer stats late into the nighttime.

At the beginning of the stream, Tyler claimed that Anarchism had begged him to come up back, and that he had insisted that he would only return to the game if he was allowed to play Draven every single game. But though he treated information technology as a joke, it is pretty articulate Tyler cared about this a lot; since the ban review began in Oct, he has plain stayed off stream completely other than an advent for the finals of his Tyler1 Championship Series tournament in November, perhaps to avoid getting in whatever trouble that might derail his unbanning.

Twitch

He played through a circular of ranked placement matches and ended up in high Silverish tier, which is far below where he usually plays. Simply these matches were going on while he was the top streamer on Twitch, which meant a lot of people who were playing ranked matches were checking his stream and banning his main champion, Draven, if he was queueing at the same time.

His opponents could as well check his stream during games to see where his jungler was, which put him at a disadvantage in every match he played. He had a target on his back, and a lot of people seemed to be trying to tilt him or get him to practice something toxic.

Tyler, for his part, stayed pretty upbeat, his spirits perhaps buoyed past the huge amounts of money he was making during his record-breaking stream. He used to tilt when his gnaw was banned, and he would rage or intentionally feed and lose games, just on Monday, he just took his backup pick, Tristana, and, in one game, he played ADC Teemo and won in adequately spectacular style with a KDA of 12/4/7.

In full general, Tyler kept the drama to a minimum and didn't take the bait when other players tried to provoke him. The stream was just 11 hours of a guy doing a thing he hadn't been able to do under his real proper name for nearly ii years.

So, what's adjacent for #REFORMED Tyler1?

Tyler1 rose to fame as a toxic clown; his early fans watched his stream to run across him misbehave in high-tier ranked matches and boldness pro players and Rioters. He hasn't done stuff like that for a long time, however, and more recently, his brand has been about his attempt at a improvement, as he climbed the ranked ladder over and over, and was swatted down repeatedly by the powers-that-be.

At present that he's back in Riot's good graces, he'south going to demand to effigy out a new story to tell about himself. At the start of his stream, he said his New year's day'south resolution was not to become banned, and if he tin hold to that, he'll disappoint a lot of people who enjoy him every bit a source of online drama.

Drama was a big reason people take tuned into Tyler in the past, then information technology will be interesting to see how many of his fans stick around to just watch him play drama-gratis League. When I wrote about him a year ago, the general consensus in most discussions well-nigh him was that his audience would apace abound bored with his shtick. He defied expectations in 2017 by continuing to build his viewership even though he wasn't able to livestream League.

Over the last two years of beingness a professional streamer, he'due south become a more polished and engaging performer, so he's less reliant on his gimmick of being "the near toxic player" to maintain attention. His hyper-ambitious style of play is likewise a lot of fun to watch, and that alone might exist enough to go on him in the top tier of streamers.

At this indicate, he's been successfully streaming for much besides long for anyone to seriously claim he is a flash in the pan. While he probably won't be getting hundreds of thousands of viewers every time he logs on, it seems he's parlayed his initial notoriety into a durable platform.

Tyler1 is probably going to be effectually for a while ... unless he gets banned again.

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Source: https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/9/16868868/tyler1-unbanned-twitch-lol-league-of-legends-riot

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